BLAME a canned, cooked meat if your bandwidth was slow on November 11.
Apparently, Spam was lapped up by young, single and millennial Filipinos during an online shopping spree on Singles’ Day, data from technology firm Voyager Innovations Inc. (VII) showed.
The product by Hormel emerged as the most-purchased item by Filipinos at Takatack, VII’s online shopping platform. The firm’s marketing campaign called “Hugot Week” offered huge discounts.
Takatack competitor Lazada, on the other hand, saw millennials were perked up on coffee.
In a statement, the platform by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. said “millennials, who are known to demand higher value, saw the highest participation” in its own online sales promotion.
“More than half of Lazada customers were aged 32 years old below,” the company said. “Top-selling items include coffee, digital goods, makeup and mobile accessories—essentials in every millennial’s daily survival kit.”
For Takatack, the digital goods that followed Spam were the Jaguar-brand power banks, which emerged as a closer second on Singles’ Day, widely acknowledged to be one of the biggest sale events around the world.
Of the top 20 items bought from VII’s platform, more than half were composed of electronics items, while the rest were imported, canned food products.
“This is the first time that Takatack ran a promotion in conjunction with Singles’ Day, and we were really overwhelmed, if not a little amused, by the reception of Filipino online shoppers,” Marc Concio, head for digital commerce at VII, was quoted in a statement as saying. “Our young people are also a practical bunch, as they spotted the best buys in preparation for the holidays.”
The company said majority of the transactions on November 11 used VII’s digital payments service called PayMaya. The purchases were by users who belonged to the millennial category—or those aged between 18 and 34 years old. At least 80 percent of these transactions were online purchases, VII said.
For PayMaya, the top payments destination on Singles’ Day was Lazada, one of the biggest online marketplaces in the country, which held an “Online Revolution” event from November 9 to 11. PayMaya partnered with Lazada to offer a 20-percent discount on purchases, on top of an 11-percent rebate for all PayMaya transactions on Singles’ Day itself.
Lazada Philippines claims its November 11 sales alone translated to over P550 million in savings for Filipinos, young and adult alike.
“Millennials are the driving force behind the digital revolution, and this crazy demand for online goods and services on Singles’ Day is yet another indication of that phenomenon,” explained Raymund Villanueva, issuing head for PayMaya Philippines. “Making financial services, such as payments, especially the ability to pay online without a credit card, more accessible to Filipinos is making digital commerce grow faster like never before.”
Aside from Lazada, shoppers spent their money through various digital services, freelance ventures, digital games, travel, fashion and groceries.
Singles’ Day, likewise, showed the strong influence of mobile, as 7 in 10 online transactions performed in Takatack were from mobile devices. Lazada said over 70 percent of orders from Southeast Asia were placed from mobile devices.
This heavy usage could be attributed to the free mobile Internet access to online sites offered by platforms such as freenet, which gave subscribers of VII parent Smart Communications Inc. free data access to online shopping sites, such as Lazada and Takatack, and digital platforms, such as PayMaya and Lendr.
“The growth of our platforms during the Singles’ Day event was phenomenal,” VII President and CEO Orlando B. Vea was quoted in a statement as saying. “Compared to the same period last year, PayMaya’s consumer business registered as much as a five-fold increase in transaction volumes, while sales transactions from Takatack jumped by a massive 4,500 percent.”
Originating from China, Singles’ Day was established as a way for Chinese male and female individuals to celebrate being single. It eventually turned into one of the biggest e-Commerce events anticipated annually the world over.
“We’re not China, so it’s a different flavor for Singles’ Day here. You can’t just copy the same playbook,” Vea said. “What we are doing is to provide easier access to digital services—be it through sponsored data, payments, digital lending and digital commerce.”
Vea added the company sees these developments as “a positive indication of the growth of the digital economy in the Philippines and a challenge for us to continue helping build the ecosystem to foster further growth in the years to come.”
